Interview with author Storm Chase

I’m Scottish-Dutch, married to Tom, an American from Michigan, and we live in Malaysia, nearKuala Lumpur, the capital city. I write fulltime as a newspaper columnist and magazine feature writer, and I moonlight as Storm Chase, romance and romance erotica author.

Q ~ If you could be any animal, which would you be and why?

My cat, Target. He’s currently lying flat out on my desk, curled up against the keyboard. He’s a five year old tabby cat, and he lives a life of luxury that we mortals can never hope to emulate.

Q ~ What’s one habit that you have that you’d like to break?

Putting off doing the dishes, laundry and ironing in favour of writing and reading. You should see the mess downstairs!

When we moved to Kuching in Sarawak, that’s a Malaysian province on Borneo, I sold some articles to the newspapers. It just built up from there.

Q ~ Who are your biggest supporters in your writing?

Target is the most practical: he stands on the F1 key whenever he thinks I need help. I’m lucky that I also have non-furry friends who are willing to read, criticise and share my posts.

Q ~ Do you have any ‘writing rituals’ that you always follow?

Nope, I just roll out of bed between 6 and 7 in the morning, stagger down the corridor, grab a coffee and start. Showers, combing hair and all that other stuff happens around 9 - or 11 if the writing’s going well. You’ll understand that I don’t have a camera for my Skype!

Q ~ When you write, do you try to reach a specific word count or simply write until you are done?

I write till I’m done. But sometimes I’ll throw it all away later. Most days I write about 1500 words for my day job, and another 1000 for my novel.

Q ~ What inspired you to write Murder in Moscow?

Although this is a stand alone story, it’s also a follow up to Wildcat in Moscow. I had this hunky secondary character, Dmitri, and I wanted to see what would happen to him when he finally fell in love. That’s when Cassidy came along!

Q ~ Do you plan your books or do they just happen?

It’s hard to say. Some just pop into my mind, complete in plot and character, like Chocolate: An Erotic Romance in Siberia. Murder in Moscow though took quite a bit of plotting because I needed to be sure that readers could figure out who the murderer is from the clues, but to have enough twists so that they couldn’t be sure till the very end.

Q ~ Do you have a favourite character in your novels? Is this individual based on someone in your life?

I like Vlad, the hero from Wildcat in Moscow best because he’s a good man on the wrong side of the fence. That’s not easy! I made him up - but he seems very real to me.

Q~ If you could give some advice to those who want to write professionally, what would it be?

Accept you’ll improve as time goes on, roll with the punches, and learn as much as you can from fellow authors. Also, don’t be hurt if you get a one star review! I’ve seen so many people give up because of a mean review, and I find that very sad. I think that if it’s only the odd one, and the rest are decent, the one star review is probably a sign of spite. In other words, it means someone thinks your work is so good that it’s threatening theirs. If in doubt, take it as an awesome compliment and keep writing!

Burned out ex-undercover detective Cassidy Stone leaves London for a new life in Moscow, but her past continues to haunt her. Life begins to look up when a favour for the embassy leads her into a lethal ambush, and into the orbit of Dmitri Milyukov, a fun loving millionaire who shares her passion for extreme sports. Cassidy slowly learns to love again – until she stumbles on proof that Dmitri is at the center of a carefully plotted Red Mafia corporate espionage operation aimed at her employer. Worse, there is a gruesome murder in her office, and everyone is convinced Cassidy is the killer…

Murder in Moscow: a thrilling tale of passion, romance, intrigue, betrayal and murder.